Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on a question I raised on April 25 regarding the issue of softwood lumber in which I asked the Minister for International Trade if he would immediately arrange a meeting of all the parties involved in the softwood lumber dispute.
Since that time I am pleased to report that the minister has had several meetings with members of the industry. He brought them all together in a very effective way. The right strategy is in place to bring all parties and all stakeholders together to deal with the American's approach to the softwood lumber issue.
Right now, as we speak, the department is hosting meetings among the province, industry representatives and the federal government with American state and trade officials in Toronto to deal with this issue.
I want to raise another set of meetings that were held in Washington about two weeks ago between the right hon. member for Calgary Centre, some other MPs, several trade officials of the United States and the vice-president of the United States.
At these meetings all individuals said they were totally committed to a long term solution. They did not want any more of these five year deals that were repetitive. Every five years they have to go through the awful process of the court system and the political system. They want a solution.
In the earlier meetings in Washington we pointed out that the new premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, had said in his election policy that they would move toward a more market driven pricing strategy. This was the first time they had heard of it and it seemed to raise their interest. They were attracted to this proposal.
The right hon. member called the premier of British Columbia and had the information faxed to him in Washington. Then he presented the actual documents to the vice-president of the United States. These documents state that British Columbia is proposing to move toward a more market driven approach to lumber pricing.
The vice-president was very pleased to see that and felt it was a very positive move toward a long term resolution to the ongoing softwood lumber problem.
This year alone in British Columbia it is estimated that it will cost industry over $1 billion. Officials feel that a strategy such as has been proposed by British Columbia will remove the tools that the U.S. industry uses to put its politicians in a corner to force trade actions against the Canadian softwood lumber industry.
We in Canada know that this is a totally U.S. political football that is kicked around every five years. The industry takes advantage of any argument it can come up with and gets its politicians to raise this question. It pushes them to bring in countervail charges and anti-dumping.
If British Columbia is able to follow through with its proposed policy of moving toward a more market driven pricing schedule for its lumber and if Premier Campbell is able to achieve his goal as stated in his policy papers in the election, would the parliamentary secretary agree with U.S. officials that this would help resolve this problem once and for all?